


His raison d'être

by EbonyMortisRose



Series: The story of Dylan Jackal & Mr Hyde [5]
Category: Vampyr (Video Game)
Genre: Dylan seeing the monster he has become properly., Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, My angst monster just want's to get home to his Mary., OC Dylan Jackal/Hyde, saying goodbye
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:22:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27136564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EbonyMortisRose/pseuds/EbonyMortisRose
Summary: Dylan, not being able to cope with his sire's ultimate sacrifice and the revelation that they had murdered his own mother, had retreated into himself and let his newly born ego Hyde take over.
Series: The story of Dylan Jackal & Mr Hyde [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1821553





	His raison d'être

**_'Wake up Dylan, it is done.' -_ ** The voice echoed in his mind. It was so familiar, a clipped English baritone. But it was corrupted, guttural. As if a demon were mimicking a friendly voice.

_ 'Henry?' _

**_‘No. Now go wash, you are attracting flies. We can not hunt prey if we smell like rotting meat.’_ **

**_‘_ ** _ What?...who are you?’ _

The gruff voice gave a huff and replied  **_‘You know what I am.’_ **

And he did. It was the embodiment of his hunger, his internal beast. He could feel it coiled around his gut currently sated after devouring his maker.    
Henry had somehow managed to separate the two egos. Just like Robert Lewis Stevenson's ill-fated protagonist Dr Jekyll. He was now stuck with his own Mr Hyde.    
But what of ‘The other’ The red bloodlust that whispered with a voice so like his Marys?

**_“Oh, she is still here. Singing her song of hate through your veins. She will always be a part of you, just as I am. You corrupted Henry's veins with your tainted blood you know? -, not the other way around.”_ ** **_  
_ **   
‘ _ Shut up!’ _

Hyde's mocking laugh reverberated in his mind, as he blinked and opened his eyes,  and found he was standing in front of his parent's bedroom door, which was closed; His grime and blood-encrusted hand was holding onto the doorknob.   
He knew Henry's body was in there with his mothers, laid out on the bed.  Mercifully, Hyde did not supply any imagery to show what he had done to his maker, to ensure he would not return.    
The main thing, he thought, trying to comfort himself, was that he was now at peace. 

He then noticed a faint greasy odour in the air of lamp oil, and when he rubbed his thumb and forefinger together noted it was slick with it.   
He shook his head thinking, you have thought of everything haven’t you Mr Hyde. But would fire burn away all our sins I wonder?   
He also saw at the foot of the door was a pillowcase. Its once-white cotton was now smeared with dark stains, and he could make out the distinct outline of grubby handprints.   
Curious, he looked inside and saw it contained his gas mask, some loose change, paper notes and the glint of various pieces of jewellery.   
He had a sudden feeling of guilt at the thought of taking such items away. It felt to him like he was stealing from the dead. But the rational part of him knew, he would need currency in any form if he had any chance of returning to England. 

England...he should never have left his Mary to suffer alone; never joined up.   
If he could turn back time, he would have gladly taken the white feather from the war widows and the shame that came with it. Rather than be where he was now, in this unliving purgatory.    
He gave out a breathless sigh and picked out the mask. It was tangled up in the chain of a gold pocket watch, one he recognised belonging to his father. He then wondered briefly where he was? He had not come across his body, yet.   
That thought made him shudder, he couldn't deal with another body tonight.   
He then took the mask with the intent of cleaning it when he cleaned himself and trudged towards the bathroom.   
  
Insects scuttled in his wake, as he crunched along, still barefoot, down the dark corridor.    
He didn't need lights to see where he was going. The layout of the living quarters above the shop hadn’t changed much in his absence.    
But the stench of decay and rot had soaked into the wallpaper, and it had even begun to peel and discolour in places. His mother was - had been, such a proud homeowner, he was glad she wasn't here to see how decrepit the place had become.

The door to the bathroom was open, and a small mass of flies buzzed around the toilet bowl. There wasn’t the expected smell of faeces coming from it, however. But the acrid tang of old blood and decomposing matter.   
In the blink of an eye, he was flashed an image of Henry on his hands and knees. Face streaked with bloody tears retching into that bowl.    
Their minds had become so intertwined at that point, that he had tried to eat the rats rather than just drain them.   
He shook his head overwhelmed with guilt. Trying to dissipate these lingering spectral fragments of torment, that that poor man had gone through to try to save Dylan's humanity.    
I’m  _ so _ sorry Henry, he thought. Why did it go so wrong?    
Deep down he knew why. It was god's way of punishing them both for their sordid acts, sodomy, the least of their sins.  
But even knowing this, he couldn’t bring himself to hate Henry. It was something inside of him that made them act like that, they were puppets to a bloody hate-filled mistress. 

Looking around the black and white tiled room, he saw there was a large porcelain bathtub with an overhead shower. And remembered his father being so proud when the indoor plumbing was installed.    
It was worth the expense, he had said. To no longer have to wait hours for the water to heat up on the stove and then transfer bucket after bucket to a tin bath in front of the fire.    
Or take those bracing trips to the outdoor toilet in bad weather.

He gave a sad smile as he ran his hand along the rim of the porcelain sink, and reached up and turned the knob on a gas lamp which was attached to the wall to the right of the mirror. As the lamp hissed to life, it lit up the windowless room with a warm orange glow. -  And in the mirror's reflection, he saw hideous visage. A blood-stained ghoul, with jaundice yellow eyes that gleamed in the light like a demon out of hell.   
On seeing the thing, he had staggered back. His hands flying to his face, fingers probing. Feeling the twisted contours and mottled features of his face. Confirming with touch that what he was seeing was actually his own reflection.    
  
“Mon Dieu!” - He heard himself gasp.

When he had first come to his senses and caught a glimpse of himself in that muddy puddle on the bank of the river Seine. A part of him thought his features were distorted, not only due to the receptacle he was looking through. But the fact that he had spent a year crawling about in human filth, acting like a rabid beast; that act would take a toll on anyone's features.   
But there was no denying what was in front of him now. In the perfectly clear mirror's reflection. He was a monster, a walking abomination.   
He approached the mirror slowly, a part of him still in denial thinking that any sudden movement would break this illusion, that this was all still, after all this time just a nightmare.  
  
The monster in the mirror mimicked his further exploration of his face. As he brushed a hand so covered in dried blood and dirt, that it looked like he was wearing brown gloves, over the ridges and bumps of the scarred left side.   
There was then another flash of memory. - Henry pacing, running his hands in frustration through his hair. Muttering about something not being right, that when he had turned him his scars should have gone.   
  
But the mustard gas burns were not the only scars on his face he noticed.   
Scattered about his now bald head and on his cheeks were small open wounds that glistened in the lamp's light. They were not caused by injury but looked more like what a rotting corpse should have on their features. Weeping, welts and lesions.   
The whole of the bottom of his face was coated in layers of dry blood, and when he swallowed he could still taste Henry on his tongue.   
He watched the thing in the mirror lift up a corner of his top lip, to reveal a row of serrated yellow blood-stained teeth that belonged in the mouth of a wolf, not a man.    
But looking back up into those ghostly yellow orbs, he had to accept the fact he was no longer a man. No longer even human.

Dejected, he stepped back and tried in vain to unbutton his grime encrusted shirt.  But it was so badly soiled in the end he simply ended up grabbing hold of the collar and tearing it off himself.   
He did the same with his trousers, thankful that the undead did not have normal bodily functions. And found though soaked through with sewer water his undergarments were free of anything else organic.   
His pants and shirt were so soiled, that they had the texture of cardboard and when he tore them off they even stood rigid on the tiled floor once discarded.

The gas pipes that fed through to the bathroom were still functioning, evident by the lamp being able to be lit, and so he only had to wait a few minutes before hot running water creaked up the pipes, then spluttered and finally blasted from the showerhead.   
It took three bars of soap and forgoing a sponge for a scouring brush - usually used for scrubbing the floors. To finally get all the grime and layers of filth off him.   
But It sloughed off in such thick, vile clumps, that he had to stop several times to grab handfuls of the matter out of the plughole and flick, grimacing into the nearby toilet bowl.  Each time it hit the porcelain with a horrid splat.  
He found he had to grit his teeth through the pain when the caustic soap got into a particularly deep wound, or the brush scrapped across a tender piece of flesh.   
But that didn’t stop him scrubbing, trying so hard to wash off the blood, the sin, the filth.   
When he did finally stop, his grey flesh had taken on a pink hue and his hands were red raw from his vigorous administrations. Even then, smelling of lavender rather than rotting meat he still felt unclean.   
  
Once out of the tub his teeth were next. Those ugly serrated monstrosities.   
A small part of him didn't want to rid his mouth of the lingering taste of Henry.  But then he remembered what else those wicked teeth had sunk into, and he brushed them until his gums bled.    
Finally he then washed out the gas mask, gave his reflection a derisive snarl, then turned and plodded out of the bathroom heading for his own room.   
  
His mother had kept it clean, and ready for when he and Mary would visit again.  But he noted the bedclothes were disturbed and there was the faint scent of Henry in here.  So this is where he slept, he thought.   
He ran his hand along the quilt, picturing his sweet Mary laying there, her beautiful eligant face lit by the rays of morning sunlight coming through the thin curtains.   
He then glanced over at that window, with the intention of making sure the curtains would in fact keep out the dawn that was only a few hours away. When his eyes fell on an object that made an instant lump rise in his throat. It was the outline of a crib.   
He couldn’t stay here, he thought, he couldn't. He had to get home to Mary now! Before he was too racked with grief to move at all.   
Quickly he threw open a nearby wardrobe, pulled out some clothes, a long wool trench coat and a pair of boots, and began to dress. His eyes furiously focused on each task, not daring to look up towards the window, not even looking at the thing out of the corner of his eye.   
  
Thirty minutes later he was standing across the street from his parent's book shop, watching the flames flick out of the upstairs window.    
No brigade would come to put it out, Paris was already a smouldering ruin, one more building on fire sadly was not out of place.

Within the confines of his rubber mask, the tin scent of his bloody tears would have been overwhelming if it were not for the fact his hunger was sated for now.   
Henry was now truly gone, but he comforted himself with the fact that he still had a reason to go on. He still had his Mary waiting for him in England.    
‘I can't wait to see your face again my love, he thought. Even if it will be from afar, and even though I am dead, you are, and always will be my raison d'être.’    
With hope in his undead heart he trudged, head down towards the docks. 


End file.
